The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962 Francis Crick, James Watson, Maurice Wilkins Share this: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962 Francis Harry Compton Crick Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins Prize share: 1/3 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962 was awarded jointly to Francis Harry Compton Crick, James Dewey Watson and Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". Photos: Copyright © The Nobel Foundation Share this: To cite this page MLA style: "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 18 Jan 2017. < BBC - History - Crick and Watson z James Watson and Francis Crick, 1959 © Crick and Watson, together with Maurice Wilkins, won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery of the structure of DNA. This was one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the 20th century.

Francis Harry Compton Crick was born on 8 June 1916 near Northampton. He studied physics at University College, London, and during World War Two worked for the Admiralty on the development of mines. He changed from physics to biology and in 1947 began to work at Cambridge University. By 1949 he was working at the Medical Research Council unit at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. In 1951 an American student, James Watson, arrived at the unit and the two began to work together. James Dewey Watson was born on 6 April 1928 in Chicago and studied at the universities of Chicago, Indiana and Copenhagen. He then moved to Cambridge University. Watson and Crick worked together on studying the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the molecule that contains the hereditary information for cells. At that time Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, both working at King's College, London, were using X-ray diffraction to study DNA. Crick and Watson used their findings in their own research.

In April 1953, they published the news of their discovery, a molecular structure of DNA based on all its known features - the double helix. Their model served to explain how DNA replicates and how hereditary information is coded on it. This set the stage for the rapid advances in molecular biology that continue to this day. Watson, Crick and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1962. Franklin had died in 1958 and, despite her key experimental work, the prize could not be received posthumously. Crick and Watson both received numerous other awards and prizes for their work. Francis Crick continued to work in genetics and then moved into brain research, becoming a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California. He died on 28 July 2004. From 1988 to 1992, James Watson directed the Human Genome Project at the American National Institutes of Health. He was instrumental in obtaining funding for the project and in encouraging cooperation between governments and leading scientists.

The Discovery of the Molecular Structure of DNA - The Double Helix The Discovery of the Molecular Structure of DNA - The Double Helix A Scientific Breakthrough The sentence "This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest" may be one of science's most famous understatements. It appeared in April 1953 in the scientific paper where James Watson and Francis Crick presented the structure of the DNA-helix, the molecule that carries genetic information from one generation to the other. Nine years later, in 1962, they shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Maurice Wilkins, for solving one of the most important of all biological riddles. Half a century later, important new implications of this contribution to science are still coming to light. What is DNA? The work of many scientists paved the way for the exploration of DNA. Way back in 1868, almost a century before the Nobel Prize was awarded to Watson, Crick and Wilkins, a young Swiss physician named Friedrich Miescher, isolated something no one had ever seen before from the nuclei of cells.

He called the compound "nuclein." This is today called nucleic acid, the "NA" in DNA (deoxyribo-nucleic-acid) and RNA (ribo-nucleic-acid). Francis Crick and James Watson, 1953. Photo: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives Maurice Wilkins. Two years earlier, the Czech monk Gregor Mendel, had finished a series of experiments with peas. His observations turned out to be closely connected to the finding of nuclein. Mendel was able to show that certain traits in the peas, such as their shape or color, were inherited in different packages. These packages are what we now call genes. For a long time the connection between nucleic acid and genes was not known. But in 1944 the American scientist Oswald Avery managed to transfer the ability to cause disease from one strain of bacteria to another. But not only that: the previously harmless bacteria could also pass the trait along to the next generation. What Avery had moved was nucleic acid. This proved that genes were made up of nucleic acid.

Solving the Puzzle In the late 1940's, the members of the scientific community were aware that DNA was most likely the molecule of life, even though many were skeptical since it was so "simple." They also knew that DNA included different amounts of the four bases adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine (usually abbreviated A, T, G and C), but nobody had the slightest idea of what the molecule might look like. In order to solve the elusive structure of DNA, a couple of distinct pieces of information needed to be put together. One was that the phosphate backbone was on the outside with bases on the inside; another that the molecule was a double helix. It was also important to figure out that the two strands run in opposite directions and that the molecule had a specific base pairing. As in the solving of other complex problems, the work of many people was needed to establish the full picture. The original DNA model by Watson and Crick. Photo: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives Using X-rays to See Through DNA Watson and Crick used stick-and-ball models to test their ideas on the possible structure of DNA. Other scientists used experimental methods instead.

Among them were Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, who were using X-ray diffraction to understand the physical structure of the DNA molecule. When you shine X-rays on any kind of crystal – and some biological molecules, such as DNA, can form crystals if treated in certain ways – the invisible rays bounce off the sample. The rays then create complex patterns on photographic film. By looking at the patterns, it is possible to figure out important clues about the structures that make up the crystal. "Photograph 51". X-ray diffraction photo of a DNA molecule, structure B. Photo: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives A Three-Helical Structure? The scientist Linus Pauling was eager to solve the mystery of the shape of DNA. In 1954 he became a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry for his ground-breaking work on chemical bonds and the structure of molecules and crystals. In early 1953 he had published a paper where he proposed a triple-helical structure for DNA. Watson and Crick had also previously worked out a three-helical model, in 1951. But their theory was wrong.

Their mistake was partly based on Watson having misremembered a talk by Rosalind Franklin where she reported that she had established the water content of DNA by using X-ray crystallographic methods. But Watson did not take notes, and remembered the numbers incorrectly. Instead, it was Franklin's famous "photograph 51" that finally revealed the helical structure of DNA to Watson and Crick in 1953. This picture of DNA that had been crystallized under moist conditions shows a fuzzy X in the middle of the molecule, a pattern indicating a helical structure. Model of the alpha helix, 1951. Photo: Oregon State University's Special Collections Specific Base-Pairing The base-pairing mystery had been partly solved by the biochemist Erwin Chargoff some years earlier. In 1949 he showed that even though different organisms have different amounts of DNA, the amount of adenine always equals the amount of thymine. The same goes for the pair guanine and cytosine. For example, human DNA contains about 30 percent each of adenine and thymine, and 20 percent each of guanine and cytosine.

With this information at hand Watson was able to figure out the pairing rules. On the 21st of February 1953 he had the key insight, when he saw that the adenine-thymine bond was exactly as long as the cytosine-guanine bond. If the bases were paired in this way, each rung of the twisted ladder in the helix would be of equal length, and the sugar-phosphate backbone would be smooth. Structure Shows Action "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material" wrote Watson and Crick in the scientific paper that was published in Nature, April 25, 1953. This was indeed a breakthrough in the study of how genetic material passes from generation to generation. Once the model was established, its mere structure hinted that DNA was indeed the carrier of the genetic code and thus the key molecule of heredity, developmental biology and evolution. The specific base pairing underlies the perfect copying of the molecule, which is essential for heredity. During cell division, the DNA molecule is able to "unzip" into two pieces.

One new molecule is formed from each half-ladder, and due to the specific pairing this gives rise to two identical daughter copies from each parent molecule. We All Share the Same Building Blocks DNA is a winning formula for packaging genetic material. Therefore almost all organisms – bacteria, plants, yeast and animals – carry genetic information encapsulated as DNA. One exception is some viruses that use RNA instead. Different species need different amounts of DNA. Therefore the copying of the DNA that precedes cell division differs between organisms. For example, the DNA in E. coli bacteria is made up of 4 million base pairs and the whole genome is thus one millimeter long. The single-cell bacterium can copy its genome and divide into two cells once every 20 minutes. The DNA of humans, on the other hand, is composed of approximately 3 billion base pairs, making up a total of almost a meter-long stretch of DNA in every cell in our bodies. In order to fit, the DNA must be packaged in a very compact form. In E. coli the single circular DNA molecule is curled up in a condensed fashion, whereas the human DNA is packaged in 23 distinct chromosome pairs. Here the genetic material is tightly rolled up on structures called histones.

A New Biological Era This knowledge of how genetic material is stored and copied has given rise to a new way of looking at and manipulating biological processes, called molecular biology. With the help of so-called restriction enzymes, molecules that cut the DNA at particular stretches, pieces of DNA can be cut out or inserted at different places. In basic science, where you want to understand the role of all the different genes in humans and animals, new techniques have been developed. For one thing, it is now possible to make mice that are genetically modified and lack particular genes. By studying these animals scientists try to figure out what that gene may be used for in normal mice. This is called the knockout technique, since stretches of DNA have been taken away, or knocked out. Scientists have also been able to insert new bits of DNA into cells that lack particular pieces of genes or whole genes. With this new DNA, the cell becomes capable of producing gene products it could not make before. The hope is that, in the future, diseases that arise due to the lack of a particular protein could be treated by this kind of gene therapy.

Photo: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives Many voices have argued that the Nobel Prize should also have been awarded to Rosalind Franklin, since her experimental data provided a very important piece of evidence leading to the solving of the DNA structure. In a recent interview in the magazine Scientific American, Watson himself suggested that it might have been a good idea to give Wilkins and Franklin the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and him and Crick the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – in that way all four would have been honored. Rosalind Franklin died in 1958. As a rule only living persons can be nominated for the Nobel Prize, so the 1962 Nobel Prize was out of the question. The Nobel archives, at the Nobel Prize-awarding institutions, that among other things contain the nominations connected to the prizes, are held closed. But 50 years after a particular prize had been awarded, the archives concerning the nominees are released. Therefore, in 2008 it was possible to see whether Rosalind Franklin ever was a nominee for the Nobel Prize concerning the DNA helix. The answer is that no one ever nominated her - neither for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine nor in Chemistry.

The DNA-Helix The sugar-phosphate backbone is on the outside and the four different bases are on the inside of the DNA molecule. The two strands of the double helix are anti-parallel, which means that they run in opposite directions. The sugar-phosphate backbone is on the outside of the helix, and the bases are on the inside. The backbone can be thought of as the sides of a ladder, whereas the bases in the middle form the rungs of the ladder. Each rung is composed of two base pairs. Either an adenine-thymine pair that form a two-hydrogen bond together, or a cytosine-guanine pair that form a three-hydrogen bond. The base pairing is thus restricted. This restriction is essential when the DNA is being copied: the DNA-helix is first "unzipped" in two long stretches of sugar-phosphate backbone with a line of free bases sticking up from it, like the teeth of a comb. Each half will then be the template for a new, complementary strand. Biological machines inside the cell put the corresponding free bases onto the split molecule and also "proof-read" the result to find and correct any mistakes.

After the doubling, this gives rise to two exact copies of the original DNA molecule. The coding regions in the DNA strand, the genes, make up only a fraction of the total amount of DNA. The stretches that flank the coding regions are called introns, and consist of non-coding DNA. Introns were looked upon as junk in the early days. Today, biologists and geneticists believe that this non-coding DNA may be essential in order to expose the coding regions and to regulate how the genes are expressed. By Lotta Fredholm, Science Journalist First published 30 September 2003 READ MORE James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin | Chemical Heritage Foundation Search James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin These four scientists—Watson, Crick, Franklin, and Wilkins—codiscovered the double-helix structure of DNA, which formed the basis for modern biotechnology. Home / Learn / Historical Biographies At King’s College London, Rosalind Franklin obtained images of DNA using X-ray crystallography, an idea first broached by Maurice Wilkins.

Franklin’s images allowed James Watson and Francis Crick to create their famous two-strand, or double-helix, model. In 1962 Watson (b. 1928), Crick (1916–2004), and Wilkins (1916–2004) jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their 1953 determination of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Wilkins’s colleague Franklin (1920–1958), who died from cancer at the age of 37, was not so honored because the Nobel Prize can be awarded only to the living. Discovering the Structure of DNA The molecule that is the basis for heredity, DNA, contains the patterns for constructing proteins in the body, including the various enzymes.

A new understanding of heredity and hereditary disease was possible once it was determined that DNA consists of two chains twisted around each other, or double helixes, of alternating phosphate and sugar groups, and that the two chains are held together by hydrogen bonds between pairs of organic bases—adenine (A) with thymine (T), and guanine (G) with cytosine (C). Modern biotechnology also has its basis in the structural knowledge of DNA—in this case the scientist’s ability to modify the DNA of host cells that will then produce a desired product, for example, insulin. The background for the work of the four scientists was formed by several scientific breakthroughs: the progress made by X-ray crystallographers in studying organic macromolecules; the growing evidence supplied by geneticists that it was DNA, not protein, in chromosomes that was responsible for heredity; Erwin Chargaff’s experimental finding that there are equal numbers of A and T bases and of G and C bases in DNA; and Linus Pauling ’s discovery that the molecules of some proteins have helical shapes—arrived at through the use of atomic models and a keen knowledge of the possible disposition of various atoms. Courtesy Vittorio Luzzati.

Rosalind Franklin Of the four DNA researchers, only Rosalind Franklin had any degrees in chemistry. She was born into a prominent London banking family, where all the children—girls and boys—were encouraged to develop their individual aptitudes. She attended Newnham College, one of the women’s colleges at Cambridge University. She completed her degree in 1941 in the middle of World War II and undertook graduate work at Cambridge with Ronald Norrish, a future Nobel laureate. She resigned her research scholarship in just one year to contribute to the war effort at the British Coal Utilization Research Association. There she performed fundamental investigations on the properties of coal and graphite. She returned briefly to Cambridge, where she presented a dissertation based on this work and was granted a PhD in physical chemistry. After the war, through a French friend, she gained an appointment at the Laboratoire Centrale des Services Chimiques de l’Etat in Paris, where she was introduced to the technique of X-ray crystallography (see video on this page) and rapidly became a respected authority in this field.

In 1951 she returned to England to King’s College London, where her charge was to upgrade the X-ray crystallographic laboratory there for work with DNA. Video of Viewing History through the Corrective Lenses of the Spectrophotometry and X-Ray Crystallography History through Spectrophotometry and X-Ray Crystallography explains how these instruments help understand structure of atoms. Maurice Wilkins Maurice Wilkins with X-ray crystallographic equipment about 1954. Courtesy King’s College London and Horace Freeland Judson. Already at work at King’s College was Maurice Wilkins, a New Zealand–born but Cambridge-educated physicist. As a new PhD he worked during World War II on the improvement of cathode-ray tube screens for use in radar and then was shipped out to the United States to work on the Manhattan Project. Like many other nuclear physicists, he became disillusioned with his subject when it was applied to the creation of the atomic bomb; he turned instead to biophysics, working with his Cambridge mentor, John T. Randall—who had undergone a similar conversion—first at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and then at King’s College London.

It was Wilkins’s idea to study DNA by X-ray crystallographic techniques, which he had already begun to implement when Franklin was appointed by Randall. The relationship between Wilkins and Franklin was unfortunately a poor one and probably slowed their progress. James Watson and Francis Crick Meanwhile, in 1951, 23-year-old James Watson, a Chicago-born American, arrived at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Watson had two degrees in zoology: a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and a doctorate from Indiana University, where he became interested in genetics. He had worked under Salvador E. Luria at Indiana on bacteriophages, the viruses that invade bacteria in order to reproduce—a topic for which Luria received a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1969. Watson went to Denmark for postdoctoral work, to continue studying viruses and to remedy his relative ignorance of chemistry. At a conference in the spring of 1951 at the Zoological Station at Naples, Watson heard Wilkins talk on the molecular structure of DNA and saw his recent X-ray crystallographic photographs of DNA. He was hooked.

James Watson and Francis Crick with their DNA model at the Cavendish Laboratories in 1953. To request permission to use this photo, please visit the Science Photo Library website at . © A. Barrington Brown. Watson soon moved to the Cavendish Laboratory, where several important X-ray crystallographic projects were in progress. Under the leadership of William Lawrence Bragg, Max Perutz was investigating hemoglobin and John Kendrew was studying myoglobin, a protein in muscle tissue that stores oxygen. (Perutz and Kendrew received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work in the same year that the prize was awarded to the DNA researchers—1962.) Working under Perutz was Francis Crick, who had earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from University College London and had helped develop radar and magnetic mines during World War II. Crick, another physicist in biology, was supposed to be writing a dissertation on the X-ray crystallography of hemoglobin when Watson arrived, eager to recruit a colleague for work on DNA. Inspired by Pauling’s success in working with molecular models, Watson and Crick rapidly put together several models of DNA and attempted to incorporate all the evidence they could gather.

Franklin’s excellent X-ray photographs, to which they had gained access without her permission, were critical to the correct solution. The four scientists announced the structure of DNA in articles that appeared together in the same issue of Nature. Separate Career Paths Then they moved off in different directions. Franklin went to Birkbeck College, London, to work in J. D. Bernal’s laboratory, a much more congenial setting for her than King’s College. Before her untimely death from cancer she made important contributions to the X-ray crystallographic analysis of the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus, a landmark in the field. By the end of her life she had become friends with Francis Crick and his wife and had moved her laboratory to Cambridge, where she undertook dangerous work on the poliovirus. Wilkins applied X-ray techniques to the structural determination of nerve cell membranes and of ribonucleic acid (RNA)—a molecule that is associated with chemical synthesis in the living cell—while rising in rank and responsibility at King’s College.

Watson’s subsequent career eventually took him to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) of Quantitative Biology on Long Island, New York, where as director from 1968 onward he led it to new heights as a center of research in molecular biology. From 1988 to 1992 he headed the National Center for Human Genome Research at the National Institutes of Health. Afterward he returned to CSHL, from which he retired in 2007. During Crick’s long tenure at Cambridge, he made fundamental contributions to unlocking the genetic code. He and Sydney Brenner demonstrated that each group of three adjacent bases on a single DNA strand codes for one specific amino acid. He also correctly hypothesized the existence of “transfer” RNA, which mediates between “messenger” RNA and amino acids. After 20 years at Cambridge, with several visiting professorships in the United States, Crick joined the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.

Further Recognition In 2005 James Watson was honored with the Othmer Gold Medal from CHF, for his scientific talent, which has given the world a new intellectual understanding of the nature of life, making possible modern biotechnology and a better life for all mankind. Visit the Museum at CHF to learn more about these four scientists. The information contained in this biography was last updated on July 22, 2015. CHF Awards Rosalind Franklin: Biography & Discovery of DNA Structure Rosalind Franklin: Biography & Discovery of DNA Structure By Mary Bagley, LiveScience Contributor | September 19, 2013 05:20pm ET MORE Rosalind Franklin Credit: National Institute of Health. Many people recall that the structure of the DNA molecule has the shape of a double helix. Some may even recall the names of the scientists who won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine for modeling the structure of the molecule, and explaining how the shape lends itself to replication.

James Watson and Francis Crick shared the Nobel Prize with Maurice Wilkins, but many people feel that much of the credit for this world-shaking achievement should rightfully go to someone who was absent from that stage, a woman named Rosalind Franklin. Rosalind Franklin was born July 25, 1920, and grew up in a well-known Jewish family in pre-World War II London, and was known in the family for being very clever and outspoken. Her parents sent her to St. Paul’s Girls’ School, a private school known for rigorous academics, including physics and chemistry. In an interview for PBS’ NOVA television episode titled "The Secret of Photo 51," two of her friends recalled memories of Franklin’s school days. “She was best in science, best at maths, best in everything. She expected that if she undertook to do something, she would be in charge of it.” By the age of 15, over objections from her father, who thought she should go into social work; Franklin decided to become a scientist. Franklin graduated from Newnham College at Cambridge in 1938 and took a job with the British Coal Utilization Research Association.

She was determined to make a contribution to the war effort, and published several papers on the structures and uses of coal and graphite. Her work was used in development of the gas masks that helped keep British soldiers safer. Her work earned her a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry awarded by Cambridge University in 1945. In 1947, Franklin moved to Paris to take up a job at the Laboratoire Central working with Jacques Mering on perfecting the science of X-ray chromatography. By all accounts, she was very happy in Paris, easily earning the respect of her colleagues. She was known to enjoy doing the meticulous mathematical equations necessary to interpret data about atomic structure that was being revealed by the X-ray techniques. However, in 1951, she reluctantly decided it was necessary to move back to London to advance her scientific career. Skirting a leftover bomb crater to enter the lab at King’s College in London, Franklin found she was expected to work with antiquated equipment in the basement of the building. She took charge of the lab with her customary efficiency, directing the graduate student, Raymond Gosling, in making needed refinements to the X-ray equipment.

She was annoyed when she discovered that she was expected to interrupt her work and leave the building for lunch every day. Women were not allowed in the College cafeteria. Nevertheless, she and Gosling were making progress in studying DNA when Maurice Wilkins, another senior scientist, returned from his vacation. Wilkins was upset to learn that the female “assistant,” who he had expected would be working for him, was instead a formidable researcher in her own right. In this tense atmosphere, Franklin continued working to refine her X-ray images, using finer DNA fibers and arranging them differently for her chromatography, but she began to fear she had made a mistake in leaving Paris. Wilkins, also uncomfortable, began to spend more time at nearby Cavendish Laboratory with his friend Francis Crick. Crick and his partner, James Watson, were working on a model-based approach to trying to discover the structure of the DNA molecule. Around this time, Franklin and Gosling made a startling discovery. There were two forms of DNA shown in the X-ray images, a dry “A” form and a wetter “B” form.

Because each X-ray chromatograph had to be exposed for over 100 hours to form an image, and the drier “A” form seemed likelier to produce images in more detail, Franklin set aside the “B” form to study later. She noted that the “B” form images appeared to show a definite helical structure and that there were two clear strands visible in the image she labeled Photo 51 before she filed it away. Around this time, Franklin attended a conference given at Cavendish to observe an early DNA model being proposed by Watson and Crick. She was quite critical of their work, feeling that they were basing their model solely on conjecture whereas her own work was based on solid evidence. Her treatment of his friends widened the gap between her and Wilkins, leading to an even more strained relationship at King’s College. Franklin was so unhappy that people in the lab began to talk behind her back calling her the “Dark Lady.” In 1953, she decided to move to Birkbeck College to escape King’s. Somehow, during the move, Wilkins came to be in possession of Franklin’s notes and the files containing Photo 51.

Wilkins removed the photo from her records without her knowledge or permission and took it to show his friends at Cavendish. [ Related: 'Lost' Letters Reveal Twists in Discovery of Double Helix ] “My mouth fell open and my pulse began to race,” wrote Watson in his famous book, "The Double Helix." It was the one bit of information that he and Crick needed to complete an accurate model of the structure of DNA. Photo 51 was proof that DNA’s helical structure had two strands attached in the middle by the phosphate bases. They hurried to publish their findings in the journal Nature. The same issue of the journal published much shorter articles by Wilkins and Franklin, but placed them after the longer article by James Watson, seeming to imply that their work merely served to confirm the important discovery made by Watson and Crick rather than being integral to it. Franklin, meanwhile, had moved on to Birkbeck. Part of the arrangement that allowed her to leave King’s was that she would not pursue any research on DNA, so she turned her talents to studying virus particles. Between 1953 and 1958, she made important discoveries about the tobacco mosaic virus and polio.

The work done by Franklin and the other scientists at Birkbeck during this time laid the foundation of modern virology. Franklin died on April 16, 1958, of ovarian cancer, possibly caused by her extensive exposure to radiation while doing X-ray crystallography work. Because the Nobel Prize can only be shared among three living scientists, Franklin’s work was barely mentioned when it was awarded to Watson, Crick and Wilkins in 1962. By the time "The Double Helix" was written in 1968, Franklin was portrayed almost as a villain in the book. Watson describes her as a “belligerent, emotional woman unable to interpret her own data.” It is only in the past decade that Franklin’s contribution has been acknowledged and honored. Today there are many new facilities, scholarships and research grants especially those for women, being named in her honor.

Latest on Rosalind Franklin: Biography & Discovery of DNA Structure James Watson Biography: Co-Discoverer of DNA's Double Helix James Watson Biography: Co-Discoverer of DNA's Double Helix By Mary Bagley, LiveScience Contributor | October 11, 2013 06:25pm ET MORE James Watson, one of the discoverers of the double helix. Credit: National Library of Medicine James Watson was a pioneer molecular biologist who is credited, along with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, with discovering the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. The trio won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1962 for their work. Early life James Dewey Watson was born in Chicago, Ill., on April 6, 1928. He attended Horace Mann Grammar School and then South Shore High School. At the age of 15, he transferred to the University of Chicago in an experimental scholarship program for gifted youngsters. A lifelong interest in birds led him to study biology, and he was awarded his Bachelor of Science degree in zoology in 1947.

He switched to genetics shortly after reading Erwin Schrodinger’s seminal book, "What is Life?" After being turned down by the California Institute of Technology and Harvard, Watson won a scholarship to the University of Indiana for post-graduate study. In 1950, he was awarded his doctoral degree in zoology for his work on the effects of X-ray radiation on replication of bacteriophage viruses. From Indiana, Watson moved to Copenhagen, where he continued his virus research as a Merck Fellow of the National Research Council. After attending a meeting at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, where he heard the results of the Hershey/Chase research, Watson became convinced that DNA was the molecule responsible for transmitting genetic information. He became fascinated with the thought that, if the structure of the DNA molecule were understood, it would be possible to deduce how genetic information is passed between cells. His virus research did not interest him as much as this new line of inquiry. In the spring of 1951, he met Maurice Wilkins at a conference in Naples. Wilkins was showing the results of the first attempts to use X-ray diffraction to photograph DNA molecules.

Watson, excited by Wilkins’ results, moved to England in the fall. He went to work at Cavendish Laboratory where he began working with Francis Crick . Early attempts Watson and Crick decided to use a model-building approach to try to discern the molecular structure of the DNA molecule. Both were convinced that understanding the molecular geometry would be central to discovering how DNA could transmit genetic information from parent to daughter cells. The men understood that discovering the structure of the DNA molecule would be a major scientific breakthrough, and they knew they were in competition with other scientists, such as Linus Pauling, who were also working on DNA. Watson and Crick had difficulty with their first attempts to build a DNA model. Neither man had a degree in chemistry, so they used standard chemistry texts to cut out cardboard models of chemical bonding configurations. A visiting graduate student pointed out that new information, not yet corrected in the text books, showed that Watson was using one of his cardboard chemical bonds backwards. About this time, Watson attended a lecture given by Rosalind Franklin at nearby Kings College. He apparently did not pay close attention. In an essay in 1992, Watson wrote: “I won’t say, but I heard it wrong.

… I had heard her talk wrong and I thought there was very little water in it (DNA) and therefore it should be a very compact structure … We said ‘Well, there are four types of bases. There is no way we can stick in a regular sequence of bases in the center in a regular fashion.’” As a result of Watson’s mistake, the men’s first attempt at building a DNA model was a notable failure. Watson and Crick built a three-stranded helix with the nitrogen bases on the outside of the structure. When they unveiled the model to colleagues, Franklin was scathing in her criticism. Her research results had plainly shown there were two forms of DNA, the wetter B form was clearly what Watson and Crick were trying to model, but they were trying to build the structure without the moisture she had shown was present. She pointed out that, when her research was applied correctly, the nitrogen bases belonged on the inside of the molecular structure. Embarrassed by this public failure, the director of the Cavendish lab told Watson and Crick to abandon their model-building efforts. Both men officially turned to other research but privately continued to think about the DNA problem.

Wilkins, who worked at Kings College with Franklin, was having some personality conflicts with her. Franklin was so unhappy at Kings that she had determined to move her research elsewhere. It is unclear how Wilkins came to be in possession of one of her best X-ray images of the DNA molecule; she may even have given it to him as she was clearing her office. It is clear though that he removed the image from the lab without Franklin’s permission and showed it to his friend, Watson, at Cavendish. In "The Double Helix," Watson wrote: "The instant I saw the picture my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race. The pattern was unbelievably simpler than those obtained previously ('A Form'). Moreover, the black cross of reflections which dominated the picture could only arise from a helical structure." Useful information Watson and Crick used the new information to construct a new double-stranded helix model with the nitrogen bases paired A to T and C to G in the center. This base pairing immediately suggested to Crick that one side of the molecule could serve as a template to exactly replicate DNA sequences to pass on genetic information during cell reproduction. This second, successful model was unveiled in February 1951.

In April 1953, they published their findings in the journal Nature, leading to presentation of the Nobel Prize in 1962. The Nobel Prize was shared among Watson, Crick and Wilkins. Nobel Prize rules state that it must be awarded to no more than three living scientists. Franklin had died of ovarian cancer in 1958. Wilkins did mention her in passing. Watson went on to work with many others throughout the 1950s. His genius appears to be his ability to coordinate the work of different individuals and combine their results into new conclusions. In 1952, he used a rotating anode X-ray to demonstrate the helical construction of the tobacco mosaic virus. From 1953 to 1955, he worked with scientists at the California Institute of Technology to build a plausible model of RNA structure. From 1955 to 1956, he again worked with Crick on discovering principals of virus construction. In 1956, he moved to Harvard where he worked on RNA and protein synthesis. In 1968, Watson published "The Double Helix," a somewhat sensationalized account of the DNA discovery.

In the book, Watson used derogatory comments and rancorous personal descriptions of many people involved in the discovery, especially Franklin. Because of this, Harvard Press refused to print the book. However, it was commercially published and was a great success. In a later edition, Watson excused his treatment of Franklin by stating that he had been unaware of the pressures she faced as a woman doing scientific research in the 1950s. Watson’s greatest financial support came from publishing two textbooks – "Molecular Biology of the Gene" (1965) and "Molecular Biology of the Cell and Recombinant DNA" (updated 2002), which are still in print. In 2007, he published an autobiography, "Avoid Boring People, Lessons from a Life in Science." Later work & controversies In 1968, Watson became the director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. At the time, the institution was struggling financially, but Watson proved to be very good at raising funds for research. Under Watson’s leadership, Cold Spring became one of the world’s leading institutions for research in molecular biology.

In 1990, Watson was named head of the Human Genome Project by the National Institute of Health. He used his fund-raising acumen to pilot the project through until 1992. He resigned over a conflict about patenting genetic information. Watson believed any commercial patents would only hinder the pure research being done by scientists working on the project. His tenure at Cold Harbor ended abruptly. On Oct. 14, 2007, on his way to a conference in London he was questioned about world events. He responded by saying he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa … all our social policies are based on the fact their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas the testing says not really.” He continued with the idea that Africa’s progress had been hindered by inferior genetic material. Public outcry over these remarks prompted Cold Spring to ask for his resignation. Watson later apologized and retracted his statements saying, “There is no scientific basis for such a belief.” In his resignation speech, Watson expressed his vision that “the final victory (over cancer and mental illness) is within our grasp." Despite this public setback, Watson continues to enjoy making controversial statements even today.

At a meeting hosted in Seattle by the Allen Institute for Brain Science in September 2013, Watson again made controversy when he announced his belief that the increase in diagnosed hereditary disorders might be due to parents having children later in life. “The older you are, the greater chance you will be carrying these (defective genes),” Watson said, also expressing his idea that genetic material should be collected from people no more than 15 years old for the later production of children via in-vitro fertilization. He believes this will reduce the chances that parents will have their lives “messed up” by the birth of a child with physical or mental disorders. Latest on James Watson Biography: Co-Discoverer of DNA's Double Helix Maurice Wilkins :: DNA from the Beginning Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004) Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins was born in Pongaroa, New Zealand. His father was a doctor and in order to pursue his interest in preventative medicine, moved the family to England when Wilkins was six.

Wilkins believes that having spent his formative years in New Zealand, he was imbued with the exploratory and adventuresome nature of the early settlers - traits that proved useful in his career as a scientists. In 1938, Wilkins graduated with a physics degree from St. John's college in Cambridge. Since England was at war, scientists especially physicists were in great demand. Wilkins worked with John Randall at Birmingham University on improving the radar. This earned him a Ph.D. in 1940, and some of Wilkins work is still used in today's radar. In 1943, the physics department at Birmingham University, Wilkins included, moved to Berkeley, California to work on the Manhattan Project . At the time, it was all part of the war effort. However, after the devastating effects of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Wilkins became and continues to be an opponent against nuclear weapons. After the war, Wilkins was hired as a physics lecturer at St. Andrews' University . Here, he again met with John Randall, now Sir John, who wanted to use physics to study biological problems.

Randall was offered a full professorship at King's College in London and there he set up a biophysics lab with Wilkins as one of his members of the Medical Research Council Biophysics Research Unit. Wilkins studied biological molecules like DNA and viruses using a variety of microscopes and spectrophotometers. He eventually began using X-rays to produce diffraction images of DNA molecules. The X-ray diffraction images produced by him, Rosalind Franklin, and Raymond Gosling led to the deduction by James Watson and Francis Crick of the 3-dimensional helical nature of DNA. Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Watson and Crick. Wilkins was made a Companion of the British Empire in 1962 and won other awards and prizes for his work. He collected sculptures and was fond of gardening. DNA was first crystallized in the late 70's — remember, the 1953 X-ray data were from DNA fibers. So, the real "proof" for the Watson-Crick model of DNA came in 1982 after the B-form of DNA was crystallized and the X-ray pattern was solved.

If the DNA of one human cell is stretched out, it would be almost 6 feet long and contain over three billion base pairs. How does all this fit into the nucleus of one cell? James Watson :: DNA from the Beginning Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004) James Watson (1928-) James Dewey Watson was born in Chicago. As a child, he was bright and inquisitive. One of his favorite words was "why?" and he wasn't satisfied with simple answers. He accumulated a lot of knowledge by reading the World Almanac, and won $100 as a "Quiz Kid" on a popular radio program. He used this money to buy binoculars for bird-watching ? a serious hobby for himself and his father. Watson entered the University of Chicago at 15 under the gifted youngster program. He did well in courses that interested him, like biology and zoology, and not as well in other courses. He decided that he would go to graduate school and study to become the curator of ornithology at the Museum of Natural History . In his senior year at Chicago, Watson read Erwin Schrödinger's book: What is Life?

The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell. He was fascinated by the idea that genes and chromosomes hold the secrets of life. When Watson went to do a Ph.D. with Salvador Luria , a pioneer in bacteriophage research, at Indiana University , it seemed the perfect opportunity to work on some of these problems. After his Ph.D. in 1950, Watson spent time in Europe, first in Copenhagen and then at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge . By now, Watson knew that DNA was the key to understanding life and he was determined to solve its structure. He was lucky to share an office with Francis Crick , a Ph.D. student who was also interested in the structure of DNA. Although both were supposed to be working on other projects, in 1953, they built the first accurate model of DNA ? one of the great scientific advances of all time. In 1962, Watson shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins who, with Rosalind Franklin, provided the data on which the structure was based. Watson wrote The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, which was published in 1968.

This book was the first of its kind, being a gossipy account of the inner workings of the scientific world, and has never been out of print. In 1956, Watson accepted a position in the Biology department at Harvard University where the focus of his research was RNA and its role in the transfer of genetic information. Although he continued to be a member of the Harvard faculty until 1976, Watson took over the directorship of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1968. Watson has had a long association with Cold Spring Harbor Lab. Salvador Luria and Max Delbrück taught a popular summer course on phage genetics, and during his graduate days, Watson enjoyed this "summer camp" for scientists. Watson has made Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory one of the world's premier research facilities for cancer, neurobiology, and basic molecular genetics. Watson retired as the President of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2004, and is now Chancellor Emeritus . Watson has played a significant role in the development of science policy, from the War on Cancer, through the debates over the use of recombinant DNA, to promoting the Human Genome Project.

From 1988 to 1992, he ran the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health while still directing Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. One of his major interests is education. His first textbook, Molecular Biology of the Gene, set new standards for biology textbooks, and it was followed by Molecular Biology of the Cell, and Recombinant DNA. He is actively exploring the avenue of multimedia education and the WWW through projects being developed at the DNA Learning Center , the educational arm of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He was and is one of the main motivators of this project, DNA from the Beginning. Watson has been described by many as brilliant, outspoken and eccentric. He is energized by intelligent people and doesn't suffer fools. Watson is an avid tennis player and has been ever since his grad school days. He still tries to play tennis every day. DNA was first crystallized in the late 70's — remember, the 1953 X-ray data were from DNA fibers. So, the real "proof" for the Watson-Crick model of DNA came in 1982 after the B-form of DNA was crystallized and the X-ray pattern was solved.

If the DNA of one human cell is stretched out, it would be almost 6 feet long and contain over three billion base pairs. How does all this fit into the nucleus of one cell?

Question: Who won the 1962 Nobel Prize for Medicine for their discovery of the structure of DNA along with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins?
Answer: FRANCIS CRICK